Highly Nonlinear, Optical, Ferroelectric, Liquid-Crystal Polymers

New Materials possessing fast nonlinear optical (NLO) susceptibilities, in particular materials with high second order nonlinearity chi squared, are greatly needed in the emerging photonics industry. The chi squared NLO materials in use today are large, high quality inorganic crystals, which have the disadvantages of being expensive, shock-sensitive, and difficult to pattern. We herein propose to develop inexpensive, shock-stable, easily patterned organic NL0 materials. These materials will have high hyper-polarizability in conjunction with very high thermodynamically stable order. These materials will be ferroelectric liquid crystals (FLCs), a unique form of matter which is admirably suited for optical applications such as NLO. The FLCs will be incorporated into a polymer, which can freeze into a glass form, thereby giving highly ordered, temperature stable NLO materials. We believe that, using monomers developed in the Boulder group, that we might achieve NLO materials with deff twenty-five times that of lithium niobate.